Reviews

Replaced by Grand Tokyo Seafood Buffet

VIP Buffet sure lived to its name in that it was a pretty pricey buffet. Despite VIP Buffet’s admission cost, they offered a pretty nice selection of food items and the food was pretty good.

Although I and a lot of other people I know were not too fond of how much it would cost to enter their buffet, many people actually came to eat at VIP Buffet and it would often get crowded. (You usually would not expect a buffet to be crowded if it’s somewhat costly but there was usually a crowd each time I went there alright.) By the way, when I say costly, I want you to know that it wasn’t as expensive as Todai but it sure wasn’t cheap either.

Their buffet was set up in an interesting way. There were fountain drinks available in two places. I suppose this helped reduce walking time to thirsty people. The restaurant itself is spacious. There is never a problem with seating here because there are a lot of seats available even when it gets crowded. There’s table seating as well as booth seating. You got to choose where you wanted to sit.

Their bathrooms are something I don’t want to get into but will get into. Their bathrooms were poor. They offered many stalls but the majority of the stalls (as well as the bathroom itself) were always dirty. It was gross and my mom was turned off by it most.

Those that come to the buffet as a big crowd (ie. party groups) would often sit at the front of the restaurant (near the bathroom). I’m not sure why but it seems to me that whenever there’s a humongous group, the humongous group would sit near the bathroom area. (Now that I think about it though, it probably had something to do with how they could easily join many tables together.)

If you were to get food before looking for a place to sit, the first thing you’d notice is dessert (or the fountain drink machine). Their dessert options were pretty good. I personally know that they don’t make their cheesecake on site. (I know this because I caught an employee taking cheesecake out of a box from the refrigerator.) If they don’t make their cheesecake on site, it’s quite possible that the other desserts weren’t made on site as well. I will admit that their cheesecake, wherever they bought it from was ridiculously good, though.

They offered sushi, seafood (ex. crab legs), Asian cuisine (ex. chow mien, egg rolls, stir fry and pho) as well as American cuisine (ex. fries and pizza). Their fries were good. Their chow mien and other stir fried noodle dishes weren’t all too good, however as they were either super greasy and/or lacked in flavor.

Unlike most people, I didn’t care about their pho (I probably would have cared for it it were vegetarian enough for me to have beef broth.) but my mom and many others that cared about that pho would often have a difficult time of getting some pho. There barely is anyone (employee) around the pho area to pay attention to a customer desiring pho. To make matters worse, they leave a box for tips so that you feel entitled to tip the person “making” the pho for you. I honestly think they should have just come up with a better mechanism around the pho thing. Although you didn’t have to tip, some people felt like they had to. (My mom tipped.) Also, the silent rule seems to be that people would line up for the pho once someone successfully gets hold of someone to “make” their pho.

Employees (particularly that of the wait staff) seem to always be overworked and that was an ugly sight to see. I’d watch a female wait staff carrying piles and piles of dirty dishes and thought to myself how it would be more efficient and less physically demanding on her (as well as any other wait stuff) if they (owner or management) allowed the wait staff to use something that had wheels to carry all of those dirty dishes.

Parking was never a problem here as there’s more than enough parking.

Location wise, it can be somewhat difficult to notice the buffet as it’s tucked way back. It’s a pink building that you’d think you’d never miss but even people that have been here before manage to miss it and having to make a u-turn to get to the buffet.

Unfortunately, this buffet is now closed and has been replaced by Grand Tokyo Seafood Buffet. They last operated on Valentine’s Day 2012. (Pretty sentimental, don’t you think?) Will I miss this buffet? Probably as I’ve eaten there more than just a couple of times, but let’s hope that Grand Tokyo Seafood Buffet will impress me once I get the chance to try it!

Dishes Tried:

Buffet

They offered sushi, seafood (ex. crab legs), Asian cuisine (ex. chow mien, egg rolls, stir fry and pho) as well as American cuisine (ex. fries and pizza). Their fries were good. Their chow mien and other stir fried noodle dishes weren’t all too good as they were either super greasy and/or lacked in flavor. Their cheesecake, although not self made was ridiculously good. Their pho station was quite problematic as there was hardly ever any employee around the pho station to make pho for those desiring pho.